Does What You're Doing Matter?

Take a good look at yourself.

If your daily activities drain you, are of questionable or
no service to others, have a negligible potential to produce income, and just
feel like a block to what you really want to do or something you merely have to do to please others…

Your life is full of sh*t.

Looky here, my man. You know when you’re on the wrong path.
You know when the things that occupy your attention are of minimal worth to
you, even if screams of “But I’m supposed
to do these things! Civilization requires it!” plague you in response. You know when the work you’re doing either
needs a boost or is simply a load of useless B.S. that will take you down the path to buttf*$k nowhere.

You know that awful feeling when this isn’t right. You know when the message pops up again, and
again, and again- especially when you see an alternative which must be right. How could it not be? You
know when you are constantly angry and bitter about having to waste your
precious moments of life doing things you don’t care about.

I’m not asking specifically whether what you do matters to
all humanity, or God, or the fish in the deep blue sea, or to yourself; however,
if your typical actions are ultimately meaningless to all of these entities, then what the heck are you doing?

I know you’ve probably accepted your anger and resentment as
normal by now, and have attempted to suppress these feelings. But ignoring your
feelings won’t change their causes. Maybe you can get away with trying to blend
into the “normal,” acceptable crowd for a while- perhaps even for decades- but
someday you will likely find yourself beaten up by regret. Then you’ll finally
know that you did not live as you really wanted to— not at all. You did not
live a real life. You could have, but the haze of lies made you believe you
could not. I can assure you that this realization will hurt.

Just stop, dude. It might seem noble and manly to press
forward and be a so-called “high-achiever,” decorated in accolades and special
job titles-- especially when your
feelings tell you differently. Well guess what: it’s not. In fact, it’s stupid. Unless you
are truly incapable of producing an alternative for survival, it’s one of the
dumbest things you could ever do.

Of course, I’m no perfect preacher. Right now I’m in my 2nd
(and likely final) semester of community college, taking 10 classes across two
majors. And I’m pissed off. I’ve
known from the start that I’m not going to use any degree I may get- which
looks like none at this point. I will not lie to you: my main reason for
staying in school is so that my parents don’t kick me out of the house. And I
suspect that many of you, my dear
peers, are guilty of the same B.S. Don’t feed me your idiocy. We both know
that, existentially, you don’t care about having a piece of paper that says “You
did it!”

Even more, we allknow that before long those pieces of paper probably won’t mean diddley-squat. You’re just letting some
institution rob you of thousands of dollars every semester because you don’t know what else to do. Because it’s what you’re supposed to do!

Someone tell me. Really, honestly, truly tell me. Do most of
the jobs people do these days matter? I can’t convince myself they do, and if
you can’t convince yourself either (note: if you have to try convincing yourself, you don’t really believe it) there’s
probably no use in sticking around at yours. Might your job be even worse than
useless, but actually harmful?

I understand that the premise of the less-beaten path can
seem overly uncertain. If I was far enough down it I probably wouldn’t be in
school anymore (though I might stick out this semester). But it’s not
impossible: plenty of people have achieved it. Take a look at the links at the
bottom of my home page to see.

Perhaps these are merely the romantic musings of an
emotionally-compromised teenager, but I believe that the work most people
really want to do can co-exist with the means for survival for each person who
chooses the path. “Means for survival” basically means money, but who knows:
things might change so much before the end of my life that money becomes inert.
As more and more people step out of the haze (which I hope is purple) and
restart life based on consciously chosen values, money might just not work
anymore. Of course, I’m not going to bank on that, but some day these “crazy”
instincts of ours may indeed take us there.

Let me throw in another pointer for ya: if your physical
health is poor, like mine currently is, ask yourself if it might have something
to do with non-physiological factors. Are you still bothered by painful events
from your past? Are you holding on to stories that cause you suffering, which you
perhaps have taken for granted as a “normal”, everyday train of thought? Those
stories are probably wreaking havoc on
your little nerve cells, man.

Might you constantly be under distress of some sort in
response to doing things that don’t
matter? Don’t block out your feelings: they aren’t dumb. Your body isn’t
dumb either. Your physical and emotional signals are trying to tell you something. What do you think
that something might be? It might be the answer to this question: What do you
need to do to heal not just your body, but your life?

Gentlemen, in the war against your conflicts and desires,
drop your weapons. The sword of social conditioning is double-edged, and it
kills slowly. This is a fight that cannot be won. Choose instead to love life
by being honest and adventurous- open to all possibilities- and you will
quickly realize that you have been fighting all this time for nothing.

(For you gamer nerds, you know that low-level monsters drop
almost no loot anyway. Go get the big ones. :) )